The “Popular University for Gaza” encampment on Columbia University’s campus in New York, NY in April 2024.
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Anti-Zionist student groups on more than 100 U.S. college and university campuses have established “encampments” in recent days to ostensibly protest Israel’s actions in Gaza and their academic institutions’ alleged “complicity” in those actions. College campuses have been the site of many tense anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents since the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. These recent encampments and related protests in support of a “Popular University for Gaza” initiative have brought those tensions to a boiling point as protesters ramp up their activity to push universities to divest from Israel.
Several protesters, including those who are participating in the encampments or have demonstrated in support of the encampments, have expressed explicit support for Hamas terrorism and urged Hamas to commit further violence against Israel. Some protesters have also directly confronted Jewish students on and near campus, at times using antisemitic rhetoric. Many protestors have called for “Zionists” to be excluded from campus communities. The concerning actions and rhetoric that has often stemmed from the encampments only serves to further marginalize Jewish students as they already face a disturbing level of antisemitism on many of the impacted campuses.
Background
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters have played a key role in organizing many of these encampments. National SJP, the umbrella organization of these local chapters, put out a call to action on April 20, 2024, urging college students, staff and faculty to “join the Popular University” and “take back our institutions,” adding “we will seize our universities and force the administration to divest.” On April 22, National SJP released the “mission statement” of these “Popular University for Gaza” protests, writing:
“…We as students will reclaim our power on campus—there will be no classes or compliance with our institutions so long as their shameless profiteering off of our genocide persists. Through the student movement for a popular university, we will transform our mass mobilization into sustained, tangible power…We will seize control of our institutions, campus by campus, until Palestine is free.”
In addition to SJP, numerous other campus and community anti-Zionist groups — many of which have played key roles in organizing anti-Israel protests since October 7 — have supported calls for college encampments. These groups include the national bodies and/or local chapters of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Palestine Action, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Samidoun, Students for Democratic Society (SDS), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and others.
Individual influencers, such as Mohammed el-Kurd and Jenan Matari, are also supporting this call to action.
Posts promoting the “Popular University for Gaza” initiative posted on social media by National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Among the early encampments were those established at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN on March 26 and at Tufts University in Medford, MA on April 7. Students at Smith College in Northampton, MA also occupied the campus administration building from March 27 to April 9. The national profile of these protests rose on April 17, when students at Columbia University in New York, NY began their encampment in the center of campus.
Heeding calls from organizations already engaged in encampment protests, student groups at a growing number of additional colleges and universities across the country have held or announced plans to hold demonstrations in solidarity with the student encampments and the broader “Popular University for Gaza” initiative.
Solidarity protests were held over the weekend of April 19 on campuses such as Harvard University (Cambridge, MA); Northwestern University (Evanston, IL); Ohio State University (Columbus, OH); Princeton University (Princeton, NJ); and Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). Additional protests were then announced for the week of April 22 at more than a dozen additional colleges and counting.
As of April 22, there had been encampments established on 13 campuses. By April 26, that number has more than quadrupled, with at least 53 encampments. These encampments span 22 states and range from large, public universities to small, private colleges. They include seven of the eight Ivy League colleges.
The full list of schools with ongoing or recent encampments is available at the end of this article.
Support for Terror Against Israel and Violence On Campus
Protesters at Columbia University, including students affiliated with the encampment and other individuals who have gathered at the campus’ main entrance gates in solidarity, have repeatedly expressed explicit support for violence.
For example, there have been multiple instances of support for Hamas and their October 7 attack on Israel. On April 17, a protester yelled “We are Hamas” and others chanted: “Al-Qassam [in reference to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing] you make us proud, kill another soldier now!” On April 20, an anti-Israel protester on Columbia’s campus held a sign that read “Al-Qasam’s [sic] next targets” with an arrow pointing toward a group of pro-Israel counter-protesters standing nearby waving Israeli and American flags.
Signs displayed at protests related to the encampment at Columbia University, including a sign referencing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing (left) and a sign featuring an image of Ahmad Sa’adat and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) logo (right).
In the late evening hours of April 18, anti-Israel protesters who were gathered just outside the campus gates to support the student encampment reportedly screamed at a group of Jewish students, repeatedly referencing Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. One protester stated: “Remember the 7th of October? That will happen not one more time, not five more times…but 10,000 more times.” Another added, “Never forget the 7th of October…The 7th of October is about to be every f***ing day for you. You ready?”
During a speech on campus at the Columbia encampment on April 20, Tai Lee, a member of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) who has previously expressed explicit support for Hamas’s October 7 attack at anti-Israel protests in New York City, said, “Let it be known that it was the Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’s name for the October 7 attack] that put the global Intifada back on the table again. And it is the sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian Freedom Fighters that will guide every struggle on every corner of the earth to victory.”
Also at Columbia, a sign displayed on one of the encampment tents read: “‘Whoever is in solidarity with our corpses but not our rockets is a hypocrite and not one of us.’ Until Victory.”
Protesters on multiple campuses have also displayed the symbols of US-designated terror groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hezbollah. For example, encampment protesters at both California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities displayed flags with the PFLP logo. At Princeton University, where students launched their encampment on April 25, a protester displayed a Hezbollah flag.
Flags bearing the logos of the US-designated terror groups Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hezbollah are seen at the encampment protests at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt (left) and Princeton University (right).
Protesters have also glorified figures affiliated with terror groups, such as the PFLP and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. At Columbia, protesters displayed a sign with the PFLP logo alongside an image of Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned general secretary of the terror group. Signs also bore the names and photographs of convicted terrorists such as Nasser Abu Hamid, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades; Walid Daqqa, PFLP; Leila Khaled, PFLP; Ahmad Qatamesh, PFLP; and others.
Protesters at Yale University, who began demonstrating earlier in the week as part of a hunger strike and officially launched their encampment on April 19, similarly displayed signs with illustrations of Walid Daqqa and Leila Khaled.
Signs displayed at the Yale University encampment honor PFLP-affiliated Walid Daqqa (left) and Leila Khaled (right).
At the University of Michigan, where students began their encampment on April 22, protesters hung a banner next to their tents that read “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA.” Intifada is a reference to two historical periods in the late 1980s and early 2000s during which Palestinian terrorists committed indiscriminate acts of violence against Israelis, including suicide bombings, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 people.
At Columbia on April 20, protesters held signs that included such messages as “Fight for worldwide Intifada” and chanted familiar slogans like “Globalize the Intifada” and “There is only one solution; Intifada, revolution.”
Multiple student groups — including at The New School, New York University and Emerson College — advertised their encampments using inverted red triangle imagery. This symbol first gained widespread use early in the Israel-Hamas war as a way to signify, in some cases, support for violent Palestinian so-called “resistance” against Israel. It first appeared in propaganda videos promoted by the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which showed footage of Hamas terrorists attacking Israeli military targets while superimposing inverted red triangles over the heads of Israeli soldiers or other targets.
Graphics circulated by student groups advertising the encampments at New York University (left) and The New School (right) utilized inverted red triangle imagery.
On a Telegram channel where they provide updates on their protests, organizers of the NYU encampment encouraged their followers to join the “Resistance News Network” channel, an antisemitic encrypted news channel that shares violent anti-Israel imagery and promotes Hamas propaganda.
Vilification and Calls for the Exclusion of Zionists
Some of the protest slogans at the encampments have included calls to destroy Zionism and to hound Zionists. The overwhelming majority of Jews identify in some way with Zionism or with Israel, and such statements are essentially calls for the exclusion of Jews. At Columbia on April 17, a protester told the crowd: “We will never let up and we will never let down until Palestine is free, Zionism is destroyed, and Zionists start to hide like the Nazis.”
Protesters also chanted slogans that demonized Zionists and Zionism, including: “Say it loud, say it clear; we don’t want no Zionists here” and “Free our prisoners, free them all; Zionism will fall.”
On April 21, anti-Zionist slogans included: “Zionists, you’re a liar; you set Palestine on fire” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine is all you’ll see.” In other footage from Columbia, protesters could be heard calling Jewish students “Yehudim” (Hebrew for “Jews”) and telling them, “Go back to Poland.”
Students at Ohio State University held an emergency protest on April 20 in direct response to the Columbia encampment, with the announcement for their protest stating, “Support of the courageous student activists of the Gaza Solidarity Encampments…We stand firmly in solidarity with these student activists and amplify their demands to their university.”
At the Ohio State protest, demonstrators marched through campus chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho; the Zionists have got to go.”